Post by Grimm on Sept 30, 2016 9:33:29 GMT -5
It could have started thusly – the babe plucked out of the reeds at the river’s edge, out of the muck where the eddies slowed to stagnant pools. Baptized with a sprinkling of stump water. Marked on the forehead with a symbol made from a poultice of limestone dust and turpentine. Raised with a single purpose in mind, and let loose at the appointed time.
Or perhaps Granny fashioned the form like puzzle pieces from the clay. She scribbled the One True Name on a scrap of paper, inserted it into the being’s mouth, and thereby gave it the breath of life.
Maybe it was nothing more than Phinehas Dillinger sitting on the porch, waiting until his name was called.
It could always have been something else, of course. And so became Hangtown. I show all this as a way to say what brings us here isn’t as important as we sometimes think. Oh, it has all (whatever all you want to believe) resulted in this. Now. But it is the Now that matters most. It’s your party, after all. And it couldn’t be more perfect. The bass thumping deep within the marrow. The darkness serving as a disorientation just before your revelation. The reverence and fear from the crowd, the deference from the announcers.
”He is unstoppable. Immovable.”
Yet there’s a nagging thought: you don’t really deserve all this attention, and that come October 9th, there will be a price to pay.
Fireballs. Lead pipes. Shovels. Blood and mist. That midnight noise pulling you always nearer the world’s edge. The air around us, burning. It’s that which leads you on this march towards this match, and it is that which you must set aside. You must be fully present. I must be intentional in all things. We must both accept this left-hand turn of fate.
Black mold stains on the threshing room floor - a dark and bloody ground. We lay waste and become a spectacle to the world. Grimm’s list of titles, and the calculation of losses adding up to more than some here have had their full sum of matches. Dreams and careers left behind as wreckage. Were they all lined up together, weighed and measured, some might consider it a heavy burden. Others hope for such a life’s work. The orogeny of Murdoc’s own career is similarly storied and terrible. He has reveled in the key of dread. And somehow, our orbits have looped around just beyond the limits of our respective gravities. But the inevitable has happened. And Deadly Intentions will finally exhibit this cosmic cataclysm.
We’re going to do awful things to each other. Dreadful, shocking things, and we’re going to mean it. I may not agree with his continued oppression of PCW. His delicious threats. You proclaim yourself everywhere as an elegy-in-waiting, even when not an active competitor.
Treat the federation like a carnival, and the dancing bear will eventually have its time in the spotlight.
I do not make unfounded accusations or insinuations. These are merely observations made over the course of a long career spent in one place. I know it well. The wheelings and the dealings off-camera, behind closed doors, not for public consumption. Maybe you would be surprised to hear I was offered my thirty pieces of silver to ensure someone’s storybook ending. Maybe you wouldn’t, and maybe I wasn’t. Regardless, you know I can’t do that. Those aren’t the books in which our kinds of stories are told, Marcus.
That being said, I have no intention of ending Marcus Murdoc the Man. He has given me no reason to - though choosing not to believe in the Hangtown Horror won’t protect you from him. However, I am your one last chance, and Grimm will be the end of days for Murdoc the Unclean Beast.
Gird yourself. You shall see dead kings.
Grimm has been the constant in all of this. Much like the tales themselves – passed down from one generation to the next, a means by which to make sense of this short, brutal existence. The power is in the repetition, with its infinitely small increments of change. A fragment of the collective unconscious. He stands as a warning. A message. A lesson. An initiation.
For no matter which of them has the worse night, Grimm is not going anywhere. Murdoc has come and gone a number of times before. He has taken this leave of absence and that. Now, with a daughter and with the Order continuing to insist upon itself, who is to say.
Title or not. A belt lost or simply dropped. You’ll move on to other things. I won’t say bigger. I won’t say better. Only…other things. Once you do (and you will), then will come the stories, the references on PCW broadcasts, the invocations of your name as comparison or inspiration or malediction.
And Grimm waits in the ring while all this goes on.
The Lord of Misrule will always be in Pure Class Wrestling to oversee his court. And so, if this Murdoc proves to be as mean as they say, why not then get the whole and genuine meanness of him, and reveal it to the world. Give me your anger, Murdoc. Give me your hate. Pour out your frustrations on me. Bring your ‘genocide personified.’ I will arrive with my tangible calm violence firmly in tow, with nothing but an aura of garnet to show my full intention.
I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Eira – your refuge, your stronghold – will be watching from home. Or watching backstage. Will she approve no matter the outcome? Will it matter? Because now there is more at stake. There is the most at stake. And it is yours to risk.
So go home and tell your daughter. Tell little Ivy Lynn that here, here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Life is a dredging of wonder and despair. It is up to each of us to find our way through the melancholy, the guilt, the miraculous. We have no choice.
And as you lay there at the last, when your struggle nears its end, as you cast a critical rheumy eye on this night, will you find that it set you free? Free of reputation. Free of expectations. Did you gain your certainty? A satisfaction that it was worth the cost, that it provided the affirmation your father was too tired to give – and your mother, too hateful.
After your body mulches into the earth, as your bones break down and you become the sand on the beach, or the dirt churned by a plow, or the dust on someone’s feet, or nothing at all…was it worth it? Did you find your validation?
If so, whisper: goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Or perhaps Granny fashioned the form like puzzle pieces from the clay. She scribbled the One True Name on a scrap of paper, inserted it into the being’s mouth, and thereby gave it the breath of life.
Maybe it was nothing more than Phinehas Dillinger sitting on the porch, waiting until his name was called.
It could always have been something else, of course. And so became Hangtown. I show all this as a way to say what brings us here isn’t as important as we sometimes think. Oh, it has all (whatever all you want to believe) resulted in this. Now. But it is the Now that matters most. It’s your party, after all. And it couldn’t be more perfect. The bass thumping deep within the marrow. The darkness serving as a disorientation just before your revelation. The reverence and fear from the crowd, the deference from the announcers.
”He is unstoppable. Immovable.”
Yet there’s a nagging thought: you don’t really deserve all this attention, and that come October 9th, there will be a price to pay.
A pilgrim of grim countenance walks the edges of Hangtown’s bastard countryside. Not quite conquered, not quite wilderness. The man alters his stride and pace in order to step on the crispest leaves. Even the dust left behind is brilliant with color, hues that go well with the man’s hair and chest-length beard. He walks so as to avoid footprints filled with water.
Fireballs. Lead pipes. Shovels. Blood and mist. That midnight noise pulling you always nearer the world’s edge. The air around us, burning. It’s that which leads you on this march towards this match, and it is that which you must set aside. You must be fully present. I must be intentional in all things. We must both accept this left-hand turn of fate.
Black mold stains on the threshing room floor - a dark and bloody ground. We lay waste and become a spectacle to the world. Grimm’s list of titles, and the calculation of losses adding up to more than some here have had their full sum of matches. Dreams and careers left behind as wreckage. Were they all lined up together, weighed and measured, some might consider it a heavy burden. Others hope for such a life’s work. The orogeny of Murdoc’s own career is similarly storied and terrible. He has reveled in the key of dread. And somehow, our orbits have looped around just beyond the limits of our respective gravities. But the inevitable has happened. And Deadly Intentions will finally exhibit this cosmic cataclysm.
A shepherd’s flock of clouds traipses across a graphite sky. The stranger watches a conspiracy of ravens croup its way along the course. He traces his own path beside a hidden wall and stops to wade through overgrown hedges and tangles of briers. He picks among the rocks, pocketing fragments of fairy darts and tarnished dwarven coins. The stranger replaces the larger stones that have tumbled from the wall.
We’re going to do awful things to each other. Dreadful, shocking things, and we’re going to mean it. I may not agree with his continued oppression of PCW. His delicious threats. You proclaim yourself everywhere as an elegy-in-waiting, even when not an active competitor.
Treat the federation like a carnival, and the dancing bear will eventually have its time in the spotlight.
I do not make unfounded accusations or insinuations. These are merely observations made over the course of a long career spent in one place. I know it well. The wheelings and the dealings off-camera, behind closed doors, not for public consumption. Maybe you would be surprised to hear I was offered my thirty pieces of silver to ensure someone’s storybook ending. Maybe you wouldn’t, and maybe I wasn’t. Regardless, you know I can’t do that. Those aren’t the books in which our kinds of stories are told, Marcus.
That being said, I have no intention of ending Marcus Murdoc the Man. He has given me no reason to - though choosing not to believe in the Hangtown Horror won’t protect you from him. However, I am your one last chance, and Grimm will be the end of days for Murdoc the Unclean Beast.
Gird yourself. You shall see dead kings.
A sinister farmer flails the devil out of an otherwise abandoned field. He unleashes his rage among weeds and unhallowed ground, bare places where nothing sprouts. The stranger considers a lonely scarecrow in its tattered rags while it sways, affirming the proceedings.
Grimm has been the constant in all of this. Much like the tales themselves – passed down from one generation to the next, a means by which to make sense of this short, brutal existence. The power is in the repetition, with its infinitely small increments of change. A fragment of the collective unconscious. He stands as a warning. A message. A lesson. An initiation.
For no matter which of them has the worse night, Grimm is not going anywhere. Murdoc has come and gone a number of times before. He has taken this leave of absence and that. Now, with a daughter and with the Order continuing to insist upon itself, who is to say.
Title or not. A belt lost or simply dropped. You’ll move on to other things. I won’t say bigger. I won’t say better. Only…other things. Once you do (and you will), then will come the stories, the references on PCW broadcasts, the invocations of your name as comparison or inspiration or malediction.
And Grimm waits in the ring while all this goes on.
The Lord of Misrule will always be in Pure Class Wrestling to oversee his court. And so, if this Murdoc proves to be as mean as they say, why not then get the whole and genuine meanness of him, and reveal it to the world. Give me your anger, Murdoc. Give me your hate. Pour out your frustrations on me. Bring your ‘genocide personified.’ I will arrive with my tangible calm violence firmly in tow, with nothing but an aura of garnet to show my full intention.
The stranger walks on. He follows an old path by a burned patch of ground. Blackened, the smell of wood smoke lingers. He kneels by an ash heap. The stranger takes a handful and tosses it into the air. He watches as the ash meanders away towards town. He wipes his hand on his britches, rises up, and follows.
I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Eira – your refuge, your stronghold – will be watching from home. Or watching backstage. Will she approve no matter the outcome? Will it matter? Because now there is more at stake. There is the most at stake. And it is yours to risk.
So go home and tell your daughter. Tell little Ivy Lynn that here, here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Life is a dredging of wonder and despair. It is up to each of us to find our way through the melancholy, the guilt, the miraculous. We have no choice.
And as you lay there at the last, when your struggle nears its end, as you cast a critical rheumy eye on this night, will you find that it set you free? Free of reputation. Free of expectations. Did you gain your certainty? A satisfaction that it was worth the cost, that it provided the affirmation your father was too tired to give – and your mother, too hateful.
After your body mulches into the earth, as your bones break down and you become the sand on the beach, or the dirt churned by a plow, or the dust on someone’s feet, or nothing at all…was it worth it? Did you find your validation?
If so, whisper: goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
